John Madden gushes over job 49ers' Jim Harbaugh has done

SANTA CLARA — John Madden reminisced about great coaching Monday as he cruised east on Interstate 80 through Nebraska's flat lands, happily making his annual pilgrimage to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

Madden wasn't raving about his Hall of Fame career. Instead, he trumpeted Jim Harbaugh's success with the 49ers.

"He's doing a great job," Madden said in a phone interview with this newspaper. "He's done one of the great coaching jobs ever, especially with that first year and the (labor) lockout and how he couldn't work with the players and they went all the way to the (NFC) Championship.

"Great coaching job."

Harbaugh is the first coach in NFL history to reach the conference-championship game in each of his first three seasons.

As Harbaugh searches for his first Super Bowl win — and the 49ers' first in 20 years — Madden doesn't think Harbaugh should make radical changes, or, for that matter, any changes at all.

Enshrined in 2007 into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Madden knows what it's like to flirt with Super Bowl contention. His teams were denied again and again and again ... until his 1976 Raiders broke through and won the Lombardi Trophy.

That title came in Madden's eighth season. His Raiders were stopped within one win of a Super Bowl berth in five of his first seven seasons, including three straight AFC Championship defeats from 1973-75. (That 1973 season marked the start of punter Ray Guy's career, which has earned him enshrinement this weekend into the Pro Football Hall of Fame; Madden is his presenter.)

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So did Madden offer his counsel to Harbaugh this offseason?

"Hell no," Madden said. "He's done a lot of good things and won a lot of big games. The last thing he needs is counseling on that.

"The answer is you don't do anything. People get close and try to do something. They panic and screw everything up."

The 49ers have kept most of their corps in tact under Harbaugh's reign, and Madden is a firm support of the "great" Colin Kaepernick. This season's changes will include two new starters in the secondary, an injury fill-in for NaVorro Bowman into November, a deeper receiving unit and a new center, who could be lined up next to a different right guard if Alex Boone's contract holdout isn't resolved.

The 49ers' near misses since 2011 shouldn't diminish their postseason runs, implored Madden, who retired from broadcasting in 2009 and works for the NFL as an advisor to commissioner Roger Goodell and a coaches' subcommittee chairman.

"Sometimes you can be one of the best, but you don't accept that if you don't get the ring or win the Super Bowl," Madden said. "There's a lot of good teams between the Super Bowl winner and other teams. Once the Super Bowl is over, we lump everyone into the other 31, and that's not fair."

Madden didn't predict Harbaugh's coaching prowess, not as he watched Harbaugh play 15 years as a "tough guy" quarterback nor when he got his NFL coaching start as a Raiders assistant in 2002-03.

"He'd always talk to me about his brother John, how he's a good coach and people need to recognize that and give him a chance to be a head coach," Madded said. "He would talk up how John should get the opportunity, instead of himself. He was right on John. He wanted me to give him more play."

Madden is happy to give Jim Harbaugh the play he feels he deserves after three seasons as 49ers coach. It sure can make the drive fly by faster from Madden's Pleasanton home to his bronze bust's resting place inside Canton's hallowed Hall.